


Lily Potter's Stupid Hair

by orphan_account



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-23
Updated: 2015-05-23
Packaged: 2018-03-31 20:20:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3991489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aspen Longbottom is dull, dumb and down in the dumps. <br/>But she has a fairy god...father (?) and (whether she likes it or not) she will go to the ball. Well, birthday party.</p>
<p>And she has a certain Princess Charming in mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lily Potter's Stupid Hair

**Author's Note:**

> This is not the best thing I've written but I enjoyed writing it and that's all that matters, right? Comments are greatly appreciated.

Aspen Longbottom exhaled slightly as she watched Lily Luna Potter stroll into the Great Hall surrounded by a small mob of other Gryffindors, tossing her copper hair as she laughed at something one of her entourage said.   
It was stupid. She knew that. Having a crush on the most popular girl on school wasn’t exactly smart- not that “smart” was a characteristic Aspen had- but she just couldn’t help it. Something about that stupid Quidditch player’s stupid beautiful hair just made her insides jumpier than Rose Weasley on the run up to OWLs.   
It wasn’t even like Lily knew who she was, the girl thought, picking at her food. They had been sharing a dormitory for five years, and the Potter girl had barely spoken two words to her. Though, Aspen supposed, the crippling anxiety she somehow acquired whenever the other girl entered the room couldn’t have helped much. It had been so even before she had realised that her feelings towards Lily weren’t just admiration. She was better than Aspen in every way. One of the two was bright, hilarious and brave, and the other was boring, stupid and more timid than the mice they had transfigured the previous week. You could guess which was which.   
Aspen prodded her food once more, feeling distinctly down on herself.   
“Oi, Aspen.”   
The girl looked up from her despair to find none other than Hugo Weasley prodding her arm. “You eating that?” He gestured to the barely touched dinner sitting in front of her.   
She rolled her eyes half-heartedly. “Knock yourself out.”  
Hugo, Lily’s cousin, was Aspen’s only friend. Sort-of. It was more that he actually spoke to her when most people didn’t. Back in first year people had tried to befriend her, but they had soon abandoned their attempts when they realised that she was far too dull to be worth the bother. But Hugo had kept at it, even when the Lavender Patil’s and the Arabella Finnigan-Thomas’ had long given up on her. She was grateful to him for that.   
Hugo was already tucking in to Aspen’s left over potato pie. “So,” he mumbled through a mouthful of potato, “You coming to my birthday party this weekend?”   
Aspen frowned, studying the place on the table where her plate had previously sat. “You’re having a party?” Aspen wasn’t so fond of parties, all the people and the alcohol that somehow always seemed to appear, despite Hogwarts’ no drinking rule.   
The boy nodded, oblivious to Aspen’s skittish tone, food spraying everywhere as he added, “In the Gryffindor common room, Saturday.” He swallowed abruptly then finished, “After the match.”  
The match. Gryffindor versus Slytherin, aka the most highly anticipated match of the year, especially for one Miss Lily Potter, chaser on the Gryffindor team and holding out for the Captainship when Declan McLaggen, current Captain, handed in his Gryffindor Quidditch jersey at the end of the year.  
“So, you coming or not?” Hugo was looking at her expectantly, and Aspen realised she had been gazing absentmindedly at Lily again, who was now seated further down their table with her gaggle of adoring companions. She gulped. Hugo was Aspen’s friend, whether she liked it or not, and she had to be there for him.  
“Alright.” She gave the boy a weak smile and he clapped her on the back, making her jump.  
“Good on you, Longbottom!” he beamed and hurried off, mouth still full of pie, leaving Aspen to wonder just what she had let herself in for. 

***

She was studying in the library on Friday evening when he came to see her, dressed in a cardigan, some sort of leaf sticking out of his dishevelled hair.  
“Hi Dad,” she smiled as he dropped down into the armchair beside her. Her father was the Herbology professor, which had its positives and negatives. Merlin forbid if one of her fellow classmates got a low Herbology grade- they’d be bugging her for days. A positive, though, was that she could see her lovely old Dad whenever she liked, and he was lovely- no Hogwarts student would deny that.   
“Hey Aspen.” He smiled back, a distinct twinkle in his eye. “I heard you’ve been invited to a party.”   
Aspen groaned internally. “I knew I shouldn’t have written to Mum about it,” she muttered, kicking herself for forgetting how excited her father got about these things. Her mother owned the Three Broomsticks pub, just around the corner in Hogsmeade. Aspen didn’t really need to write to her mother as she saw her whenever they visited the local village, but they both liked the ritual, the feeling of putting pen to paper, so they did it anyway.  
Her father put his hands up in surrender. “This is none of my doing.” He handed her a brown package with “The Three Broomsticks” emblazoned on the front. “Your mother wanted me to give you this.” Before Aspen had the time to ask him what it was, he had left.  
The Gryffindor girl looked around the library apprehensively. It was deserted, with the exception of a seventh year snoozing in the corner with a book balanced on his face and Madame Pince, the hundred-year-old librarian (who was now too deaf to really tell if someone was being excessively loud in her library). Aspen considered the package in her lap.  
I guess it can’t hurt to look, she thought and tore it open.

***

Saturday night. Aspen was sat on the floor of the dormitory, trying desperately to calm her breathing and praying that no one would come up the stairs and see her there, all pathetic-looking. They had won the match. The festivities would be carrying through to Hugo’s party, and the buzz Aspen could hear even from up in the girls’ dormitories indicated that this was certainly the case. She wanted to go down there. She wanted to more than anything. But every time she even considered standing up, walking down those stairs… her throat would close and her head would spin and she would wonder what the appeal of parties were anyway. The moment she decided that staying her room might be the best option was also the moment a loud, wailing, klaxonlike sound erupted from the doorway, breaking the girl’s anxious trance and pushing her towards the door, to the top of the stairs. There was Hugo, lying at the bottom of what had once been the staircase to the girls’ dormitories and had now become some sort of slide. The party goers had roared with laughter at the sight of their host sprawled on the ground in such an unseemly fashion but, as Aspen stood there blinking, the merriment dulled until there was not a whisper to be heard. The girl looked down at herself. The midnight blue dress fell to Aspen’s no longer so knobbly-looking knees, the soft material hugging her waist. Even as she remained stock still, everyone staring up at her, the dress shimmered in a way that could only be attributed to magic (or, as Aspen had earlier discerned, cotton made from the moonlace plant her father grew).   
“Woah.” Hugo breathed, breaking the silence as he scrambled to his feet. The moment was over and the guests went back to their celebrations, much to Aspen’s relief. 

***

“Where did you get that dress?”  
“You look gorgeous!”  
“That dress!”  
Aspen was surrounded by Lavender Patil’s and Arabella Finnigan-Thomas’ and feeling excruciatingly uncomfortable. Hugo had disappeared off somewhere as soon as the Firewhiskey was produced and she hadn’t even dared to scan the uncomfortably packed common room for the elusive Lily Potter.   
“Um,” she mumbled, glancing around for a feasible escape route. Her eyes finally locked on to a cupboard in the corner that was usually hidden by a red armchair, virtually beckoning her into its empty, Gryffindor-less paradise. “I’m just going to-” Not bothering to finish her lacklustre excuse, she darted through the crowd, diving into the darkness.  
“Ouch!” Aspen froze. She had stepped on something hard and leg-shaped. “Who’s that?”  
“Um, Aspen Longbottom?” the petrified girl spluttered at the anonymous cupboard dweller. “I’m sorry, I’ll go-”  
“No!” the stranger, who Aspen now realised was obviously a girl, protested, “Stay.”  
It was better to be in the cupboard than out in the party, she figured, so Aspen sat down opposite the girl’s silhouette, pulling her knees up to her chest. “Okay.”   
The silhouette laughed.   
“What?” Aspen asked.  
The girl shifted in the darkness. “Nothing. It’s just weird isn’t it? It’s a party, and we’re both sitting in a cupboard.” She sighed. “Why are you in here?”  
Aspen wrinkled her nose. “I don’t really like parties. Usually people leave me alone though.”  
“Ah yes,” the shape remarked, “You had the big entrance, didn’t you? You look gorgeous in that dress, by the way.”  
“Oh don’t.” Aspen hid her head in her hands. Something about this stranger made her want to forget her anxiety and just talk for once. “If I have to hear one more comment about this stupid dress-”  
“Tell me about it.”  
Aspen removed her face from her sticky palms. “What do you know about it?”  
The girl laughed even louder this time. “Trust me. This is my entire life.”  
“I’m sorry.” Aspen frowned. Who was this girl?  
“You know what Aspen? You’re so much nicer than you seem.”  
“Um, thanks, I guess?”  
“No, like, seriously. We should hang out more often.” The smile in the girl’s voice was evident, and Aspen smiled back, even though she knew the mystery girl couldn’t see it. The two girls just sat there for a moment, neither wanting to return to the party. Then with a creak of the door, Aspen was blinded by light.  
Oh Merlin.   
“Lily! You wanna play ‘Truth or Dare’? Oh, hey Aspen.”


End file.
